


A Place In The Family

by Pic_Akai



Series: Skye 'verse [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-13
Updated: 2014-04-13
Packaged: 2018-01-19 05:43:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1457872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pic_Akai/pseuds/Pic_Akai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock sometimes takes for granted his role in John's family. John has a harder time accepting it, especially when it comes to his daughter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Place In The Family

**Author's Note:**

> This is a piece in the same ‘verse as We All Need To Be Protected.

Sherlock cannot understand why anyone would willingly attend a parent and baby group, simply for the purpose of being there. There are, granted, a great many things people do which he is baffled by, but this seems like some special sort of hell.

Toys litter the floor. Babies, indeed, are even more wildly spread out, a couple of the older ones planning actual escape attempts. That is at least something slightly entertaining to watch, as their respective mothers engage in a well-practised dance of, "No, back over here...why don't you play with the train? You like trains, don't you?"

Trains were perhaps what the toddlers were attempting to access, a method for getting as far away from here as possible, but it was not to be.

Skye, at least, is enjoying herself. This is in the sense that she's doing exactly what she would be doing at home, but sitting in a noisy and overcrowded room surrounded by other babies who occasionally move into her space and distract her for a few moments before she dismisses them. Sherlock learnt his lesson from the first group, so he sits on the floor instead of on the chairs like most of the mums do, and keeps her close to him. When he let her get more than a few feet away last time, several of the mothers took this as an invitation to try to interact with her when she was near their babies. It was not.

There is one dad in the group, a stay at home father who is clearly getting more female company out of the women here than he does with his wife at home, who works exceedingly long hours. The man seems more than happy with this arrangement, which is interesting, but Sherlock is too busy both watching Skye and gathering information from the three women he's here to observe to pursue that interest further.

"Polar bears are a sister species of the brown bear," Sherlock tells Skye. "They were originally considered to be their own genus, but that was incorrect."

Skye briefly looks at him and smiles, the stuffed polar bear still in her mouth. Sherlock has already weighed up Mary and John's varying opinions on pathogens, the likelihood of building up immunity versus getting incredibly sick, and eventually went with the decision that removing the polar bear would result in far more attention on him than he wants when he's trying to observe.

"Ryland, no!" In the space of a second, a large toddler appears just behind Skye, a chubby hand reaches out to grab the bear, and another pair of larger hands snatch the child away just before he makes contact. Sherlock blinks and looks up. One of the women he is watching is holding the toddler, who is starting to kick his legs in the air. She's holding him well away from her body, clearly practised at this. She places him down and turns him in one fluid motion. "Ryland, that baby is already playing with the bear. You have to wait your turn. Here's a monkey, look." She glances over the boy's head as soon as he takes the monkey. "Sorry."

Sherlock smiles the smile he's been practising since last week; it has varying tones of relief, exhaustion, pity, regret and a certain we're-all-in-this-together Blitz spirirt sort of vibe. He tried it a couple of times while out with Skye and was amazed at how easily people responded to it, willing to forgive him almost anything.

"It's fine," he says. "Babies." Most parents, he has observed, seem to talk like this: short sentences, one word with thousands left unsaid. It's as if sleep deprivation has robbed them of language as well, or maybe it's the hours spent around a person who can't understand anything longer than two or three words.

Before he can segue into a discussion about her job, though, his phone rings. It's John. "Hello?"

"Where is my daughter, Sherlock?" asks John.

"Skye's with me," Sherlock tells him.

John huffs. "I know that much; that's why I phoned. Where are you?"

"We're at a...thing. A group. With babies."

"A parent and baby group?" John sounds incredulous.

"Yes."

"You're not a parent," John says, as though Sherlock wasn't aware.

"I am today," Sherlock says. He smiles briefly at the mother of the rampaging toddler, encouraging her to stick around until he gets John off the phone. This does then mean he has to intercept the toddler's second attempt on the bear, but the toddler becomes fascinated enough by a bright plastic thing he produces from behind his back that it doesn't matter. Still, just to be safe, he scoops Skye into his lap.

"No, you're not. I am a parent and you've stolen my daughter."

What Sherlock would like to say is, "I haven't _stolen_ her," but even he is aware that that wouldn't be wise in this environment. Instead, he says, "You can come and meet us if you like. The group finishes in half an hour."

"Yes, I bloody well will. Where are you?"

"Da da da da da!" Skye babbles, dropping the bear, as Sherlock gives the address.

"Yes, dada," Sherlock agrees.

Half an hour later, Skye is starting to show signs of becoming overstimulated, but Sherlock has almost all the information he needs. He wants to get a chance to speak with one of the other women, but that can wait until next week. Today has been particularly productive.

Sherlock has settled Skye into her pram, and she is already started to nod off when he meets John outside the community centre. He smiles brightly at Beth, who's revealed far more than she realises, as she leaves with her son. "See you next week?" he asks. John is leaning into the pram, but on realising Skye is sleeping, he leaves her be.

"Sure!" Beth calls over her shoulder, and heads off.

Sherlock turns to John, and is immediately wary of John's stance: straight-backed and fists held at his sides. John is not happy.

"Why are you at a parent and baby group-" John starts to ask.

"John, we'll have to go if we're to get there on time," Sherlock interrupts him. It's dangerous, but less so than letting John reveal to the few stragglers that Skye is John's daughter and not his. He starts walking briskly off with Skye, knowing John will follow.

"What are you doing?" John snaps, as he comes alongside. Sherlock keeps walking at a fast pace until they have definitely left all the group attendees behind, then slows down. "Why have you brought Sophie to a parent and baby group when you're _not a parent_ and why are you now running away?"

"It's for a case," Sherlock says. "I needed information from some of the women who attend. Well, I still need more but today has been very lucrative."

"So you stole my child. For a case."

Sherlock really isn't understanding why John is angry. He stops at a cafe; sometimes drinking or eating will distract John from anger. A man coming out holds the door for him and he bumps the pram up the step, then smiles and says thank you.

"Oh, you've manners enough to thank a stranger for holding a door, but not enough to tell a man you've taken his baby?"

"You knew I was looking after her," Sherlock says, starting to get peeved now. They join the queue, or rather he does with Skye and John stands next to him like he's been forced to be there.

"Yes, at my house. Sherlock, I expected to come home from work and find her there. Or at least have you be at the park or something. I was home an hour before I called. You could at the very least have sent a text."

"But you called."

John's jaw moves sideways while the rest of him keeps still. "Didn't they think you were a bit weird for bringing a baby that's not yours to a group?"

The queue moves forward. "Well, of course I didn't tell them she wasn't mine." Sherlock feels a bit odd saying that but he doesn't have a better way to express it. Really, he feels Skye is his, just the same as John is his and Mary. There may not be commonly accepted bonds that join them, but Sherlock doesn't need those labels to understand his own feelings on the matter.

"So you pretended that my daughter was yours?"

Sherlock looks at John. He recognises the tone which is just shy of shouting. It seems that others in the cafe recognise it too, because a couple of people glance their way then away. One woman is looking at Skye instead and Sherlock wants to block her view, but that is apparently irrational behaviour and right now, John doesn't look like he's feeling too forgiving of what he sees as Sherlock's faults.

John's fists are clenched very tightly now. He's standing quite close, and no matter how anyone else might joke about it or even really think about it, it's not because he fancies Sherlock.

"Yes," Sherlock says slowly, while he thinks of what might make it better. "But I didn't tell them she wasn't yours."

They're at the front of the queue now. John is still seething. Sherlock orders the coffee that John will never buy for himself and a cream cake, plus a black coffee he doesn't want because another barrier between himself and John hitting him seems prudent right now.

John doesn't say anything until they get outside. Two steps towards the tube station he says, "Don't you ever dare tell anyone you're her father again, Sherlock."

He sounds very serious and very angry, like the times when Sherlock put himself in life-threatening danger; not the usual threat of being beaten up or overdosing but really could-have-been-killed.

Sherlock knows he should just nod, accept it, and wait until John is calmer to ask why, or ask Mary, who's often able to interpret John's more irrational behaviour for him.

Sherlock is only naturally good at being patient with one person, and that's the baby sleeping in the pram.

"Why?"

"Stop!" John barks. Stunned, Sherlock does, the pram jerking back slightly. Immediately he peers over to check Skye hasn't awoken, but John elbows him out of the way and takes the handle. Sherlock regains his balance awkwardly and stares at John.

John shuts his eyes for a few moments and breathes. He opens them again and moves them out of the middle of the pavement, since they're getting in the way. Sherlock follows and they stand against the side of an office block. John's turned the pram towards him, and he reaches inside for a few moments. Sherlock can't see but he assumes John is stroking Skye's face, as he often does when she's sleeping and he wants to connect with her.

Eventually, he straightens again and looks at Sherlock. "Sophie is my daughter," he says. "Mine and Mary's. We are her parents. You are..." he pauses and Sherlock can see him biting back something, "at best approximation, an uncle. No matter how close you get to her, how much you need her for a case - which, by the way, should _never_ be something you use her for without asking us; you can use me like that because I'm an idiot who chooses to be with you, but she doesn't - no matter what...what anyone thinks, I am her father."

"Of course you are," Sherlock says.

"It's not an of course!" John shouts, then immediately glances down at Skye and takes a breath, pulling himself back in. "It's not an of course," he says again, more quietly. "Not everybody thinks it's of course. You - you and Mary... She's a smart baby, Sherlock. I mean I would think that, she's mine, but she is. She's getting cleverer by the day. And you treat her like she's yours. She comes to you almost as much as she does to me. And that's just while she needs feeding and changing and being...bounced around the room. When she's older..."

He pauses again, and his voice has changed now. It's much softer, the anger replaced by something else. "When she's old enough to understand a lot more, she's going to be much more on your level than she is mine. And I get that, I really - I really love her and I want the best for her and she should be able to absolutely fulfill her potential, but..."

John looks at Sherlock. Sherlock looks back at him, still absolutely at a loss as to what John is getting at.

"I don't want to be left behind," says John. "I want her to know that I am her father, and to come to me before you, unless it's...I don't know, questions about cat livers or the decaying rate of mould or types of tobacco ash. And by the way if she ever asks you about cigarettes, or drugs...or alcohol, or...anything that could hurt her at all, you say nothing and tell me, all right?" Sherlock nods quickly. He has a feeling he'll need a more specfic list becaue as far as he knows there is danger everywhere, but he doesn't think John means for him to pass on every question. At least, he hopes not.

"I will make sure she knows you are her father," Sherlock says, and he means it to be true. He doesn't want to take over with Skye. He has been told by numerous people that he has far more of a role in her life than anyone else would allow him, and that he is very lucky. He knows he was lucky to have John, let alone Mary and Skye, and that there will often be times, as there have been already, where he disagrees with a choice they make for her but he needs to put up with it.

John takes a deep breath, then lets it out suddenly. "Good," he says. "Good."

There is a pause, then Sherlock remembers. "Next week-" he starts to say.

"Not the right time," John cuts him off, turning the pram and setting off again towards the tube.

Sherlock follows. He walks alongside John and his daughter and he knows he is lucky to be there. This might not be his family in the strictest sense of the word, but he has a place here.

**Author's Note:**

> I adore concrit.


End file.
